January Musings

Armando Diana

This time of year is the slowest for baseball lovers.  We are still about six weeks away from spring training, the football playoffs will be over soon and I don’t consider basketball and hockey sports worth watching. The Mets are fighting to stay relevant but there are a few things worth raising:

·         Fernando Martinez’s descent from can’t miss top prospect, to also ran with arthritic knees should be a warning to anyone getting too excited about Zach Wheeler, Matt Harvey, and Jeruys Familia.  The Mets have been here before with Generation K, Gregg Jefferies and Lastings Milledge.

·         If the news today of the potential minority owners closing with the Mets is true, it proves there are five people dumber than the Wilpons.  Why anyone would trust $20 million to the Wilpons is beyond me but, hey, it’s their money.

·         Does anyone else get the feeling the Mets are becoming the purgatory of wayward baseball personnel? With notable exceptions, it seems players, executives, trainers, and medical staff who have past their prime, never had a prime or will never have a prime seem to stay with the Mets while others who can amount to something leave. It’s like the old corporate adage:  the good employees leave while the mediocre ones remain. 

·         For those who enjoy irony or poetic justice: How sweet will it be for Houston fans to have Martinez become the player the Mets thought he would be after the Mets won the Carlos Beltran sweepstakes and plucked him from the Astros?